Book of Armagh

Book of Armagh
Codex Ardmachanus
A page of text from the Book of Armagh.
Also known as	Liber Ar(d)machanus (Book of Armagh), Canoin Phatraic (Canon of Patrick)
Ascribed to	Ferdomnach of Armagh, St Patrick, Sulpicius Severus and others
Language	Latin, Old Irish
Date	9th century
State of existence	Incomplete
Manuscript(s)	TCD MS 52
Length	222 folios (folios 1 and 41-44 are missing)

The Book of Armagh or Codex Ardmachanus (ar or 61) (Irish: Leabhar Ard Mhacha), also known as the Canon of Patrick and the Liber Ar(d)machanus, is a 9th-century Irish illuminated manuscript written mainly in Latin. It is held by the Library of Trinity College Dublin (MS 52). The document is valuable for containing early texts relating to St Patrick, the 7th century Irish bishop Tírechán, the Irish monk Muirchú.

The book contains some of the oldest surviving specimens of Old Irish and for being one of the earliest manuscripts produced by an insular church to contain a near complete copy of the New Testament.

History

The manuscript was once reputed to have belonged to St. Patrick and, at least in part, to be a product of his hand. Research has determined, however, that the earliest part of the manuscript was the work of a scribe named Ferdomnach of Armagh (died 845 or 846). Ferdomnach wrote the first part of the book in 807 or 808, for Patrick's heir (comarba) Torbach, abbot of Armagh. Two other scribes are known to have assisted him.

The people of medieval Ireland placed a great value on this manuscript. Along with the Bachal Isu, or Staff of Jesus, it was one of the two symbols of the office for the Archbishop of Armagh. The custodianship of the book was an important office that eventually became hereditary in the MacMoyre family. It remained in the hands of the MacMoyre family in the townland of Ballymoyer near Whitecross, County Armagh until the late 17th century. Its last hereditary keeper was Florence MacMoyer. By 1707 it was in the possession of the Brownlow family of Lurgan. It remained in the Brownlow family until 1853 when it was sold to the Irish antiquary, Dr William Reeves. In 1853, Reeves sold the Book to John George de la Poer Beresford, Archbishop of Armagh, who presented it to Trinity College, Dublin, where it can be read online from the Digital Collections portal of the Trinity College library.

Manuscript

The book measures 195 by 145 by 75 millimetres (7.7 by 5.7 by 3.0 in). The book originally consisted of 222 folios of vellum, of which 5 are missing. The text is written in two columns in a fine pointed insular minuscule. The manuscript contains four miniatures, one each of the four Evangelists' symbols. Some of the letters have been colored red, yellow, green, or black. The manuscript is associated with a tooled-leather satchel, believed to date from the fifteenth century.

It contains text of Vulgate, but there are many Vetus Latina readings in the Acts and Pauline epistles.

Illumination

The manuscript has three full-page drawings, and a number of decorated initials in typical Insular style. Folio 32v shows the four Evangelists' symbols in compartments in ink, the eagle of John resembling that of the Book of Dimma. Elsewhere yellow, red, blue and green are used.

Dating

The dating of the manuscript goes back to Rev. Charles Graves, who deciphered in 1846 from partially erased colophons the name of the scribe Ferdomnach and the bishop Torbach who ordered the Book. According to the Annals of the Four Masters Torbach died in 808 and Ferdomnach in 847. As Torbach became bishop in 807 and died in 808 the manuscript must have been written around this time. Unfortunately to make the writing better visible Graves used a chemical solution and this had the effect that the writing related to the scribe and bishop is not readable any more.

Contents

The manuscript can be divided into three parts:

Texts relating to St Patrick

The first part contains important early texts relating to St. Patrick. These include two Lives of St. Patrick, one by Muirchu Maccu Machteni and one by Tírechán. Both texts were originally written in the 7th century. The manuscript also includes other miscellaneous works about St. Patrick, including the Liber Angueli (or the Book of the Angel), in which St. Patrick is given the primatial rights and prerogatives of Armagh by an angel. Some of these texts are in Old Irish and are the earliest surviving continuous prose narratives in that language. The only old Irish texts of greater age are fragmentary glosses found in manuscripts on the continent.

• Muirchu, Vita sancti Patricii
• Tírechán, Collectanea
• notulae in Latin and Irish on St. Patrick's acts, and additamenta, charter-like documents later inserted into the manuscript
• Liber Angeli ('The Book of the Angel') (640 x 670), written in Ferdomnach's hand
• St. Patrick, Confessio in abbreviated form

New Testament material

The manuscript also includes significant portions of the New Testament, based on the Vulgate, but with variations characteristic of insular texts. In addition, prefatory matter including prefaces to Paul's Epistles (most of which are by Pelagius), the Canon Tables of Eusebius, and the Letter of Jerome to Pope Damasus are included.

Life of St Martin

The manuscript closes with the Life of St. Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus.

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Book of Armagh — Technically known as LIBER AR(D)MACHANUS.

A celebrated Irish-Latin manuscript preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. It is a vellum, in small quarto, and in a fine state of preservation, with the exception of the commencement, where a few pages are missing. In its present condition it consists of 221 leaves (442 pages) with the writing in double or, less often, in triple columns. The Irish band is used throughout, but some of the initial letters are in Greek character, and some of the letters are lightly coloured black, red, green, and yellow. The penmanship is, on the whole, very beautiful, distinct, and uniform. The only drawings in the manuscripts are four, representing the symbols of the Evangelists. Because of the value that the Irish placed on the Book of Armagh, it was often richly bound, and encased in shrines of artistic workmanship. The Book of Armagh was also known as the "Canon of Patrick", and it was once thought that it was the Patron's own book and in part, the work of Patrick himself. It was left for Bishop Charles Graves, however, to discover from the erasures in the manuscript itself, and from references in the Annals to names which he had pieced together from the Book of Armagh, that the name of the scribe of, perhaps, the entire work was Ferdomnach of Armagh, who died in 845 or 846, and that he wrote the first part of the Book in the year 807 or 808.

The Book of Armagh is, in the main, a transcript of documents of a much older period than the Book which has preserved them, and these documents are of inestimable value for the early history and civilization of Ireland. Above all, this collection is valuable because it contains the earliest writings that have come down to us relating to St. Patrick. The author of one of the Lives of Patrick, which the Book of Armagh contains, was one Muirchu Maccu Machteni, who wrote at the request of Aed, Bishop of Sletty. The author of the other Life was Tirechan, who wrote, we are told, for Bishop Ultan of Ardbraccan. Both these authors wrote at about the middle of the seventh century, and had as their authorities even older memoirs. The Book contains other miscellaneous documents relating to St. Patrick, and gives considerable information on the rights and prerogatives of the See of Armagh. Among the miscellaneous contents may be mentioned the "Liber Angueli" (so spelled in the Irish fashion to show that the g was not palatalized), "the Book of the Angel", wherein an angel is represented as entrusting to St. Patrick the primatial rights of Armagh; the Eusebian Canons, St. Jerome's letter to Damasus, Epistles of St. Paul, with prefaces, chiefly by Pelagius, Epistles of James, Peter, John, and Jude; the Apocalypse, the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, John, and Luke, and the "Life of St. Martin of Tours", by Sulpicius Severus. At bottom of folio 16 verso, there is an entry which the scribe says was made "in conspectu Briani imperatoris Scotorum", that is, in the presence of Brian Borumha, probably in the year 1002.

St. Bernard, writing in the twelfth century, in his "Life of Malachi", speaks of a certain book which, he says, was one of the marks of the primatial rights of the See of Armagh. This was probably the "Liber Ardmachanus". In such high estimation was this Book held that a custodian was appointed for it and in virtue of his office he had, as his remuneration no less than eight townlands. It was probably one of his functions to carry the Book on occasions of state and ceremony. The name of the keeper (in Irish, Maor, "steward") became in the course of time the family name of the keeper, since the office was hereditary, and they became known is mac (pl. meic) maor, or, anglicized, Moyre or Moyer. The precious Book thus changed hands frequently, and there is mention in the records that it was once pawned as security for a claim of five pounds. In the latter part of the seventeenth century it passed from the hands of the MacMoyres into the possession of the Brownlow family of Lurgan, with whom it remained until 1853, when it was purchased for three hundred pounds by the Irish antiquarian, Dr. Reeves, and by him transferred, on the same terms, to the Anglican primate Beresford, who presented it to the Library of Trinity College. There is evidence to show that the Book was often used when giving testimony, and that oaths were sworn, and covenants ratified on it. This may account for some of the pages having the appearance of having been rubbed or touched frequently. The Irish of the Book of Armagh is of the greatest importance for the history of the Irish language. It is not only one of the very oldest monuments of the Old-lrish, since it is antedated only by the fragmentary glosses in the Irish manuscripts preserved on the Continent, but it is the earliest extant specimen of a continuous narrative in Irish prose. It represents the language of the end of the seventh, or of the beginning of the eighth, century. The phonetic peculiarities of the Irish of that period, as evidenced in the Book of Armagh, are described briefly by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan in the preface to the second volume of their "Thesaurus Paleohibernicus", XIII, sqq. This same volume contains all the Irish found in the Book of Armagh.

On the date of the manuscript, see CHARLES GRAVES, in The Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, III, 316 sq., 356 sqq. described by GEORGE PETRIE in his Inquiry into the Origin and Uses of the Round Towers of Ireland in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, XX 330 sqq. All the documents in the Book relating to St. Patrick are in WHITLEY WHITLEY S'TOKES'S The Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, pt. 11, 1887, and were reprinted by E. HOGAN, from the Analecia Bollandiana, I and 11, under the caption Excerpta hibernica ex Libro Armachano, in his Outlines of the Grammar of Old-Irish (Dublin, 1900). See also STUART, Historical Memoirs of the City of Armagh, ed. COLEMAN (Dublin, 1900); BETHAM, Irish Antiquarian Researches, 11, - 1827; HEALY, Ancient Schools of Ireland (Ist ed., Dublin), 103-105. A critical, definitive edition of the whole Codex, reproducing the text "diplomatically ", was projected by the late Dr. Reeves. It is now announced for immediate publication by Professor Gwynn of Dublin.

Bibliography

• O'Neill, Timothy. The Irish Hand: Scribes and Their Manuscripts From the Earliest Times. Cork: Cork University Press, 2014. ISBN 978-1-7820-5092-6
• Sharpe, Richard (1982). "Palaeographical Considerations in the Study of the Patrician Documents in the Book of Armagh". Scriptorium. 36: 3–28. doi:10.3406/scrip.1982.1240.

External links

• Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "The Book of Armagh". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Gwynn, John, ed. (1913). Liber Ardmachanus: the book of Armagh. Dublin, Hodges, Figgis & co., ltd. “In the following pages the entire text of the Book of Armagh, as now extant, is reproduced, paginatim lineatim verbatim literatim”
• Book of Armagh. Digital facsimiles. Royal Irish Academy.
• Book of Armagh. Trinity College Digital Collections. MS 52.
• Treasures of early Irish art, 1500 B.C. to 1500 A.D. (pdf). Thomas J. Watson Library: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1977. OCLC 893699154. “Contains material on the Book of Armagh (cat. no. 43 & 67)”
• "Book of Armagh". Codices Latini Antiquiores. 2. Earlier Latin Manuscripts. November 2016. CLA 270.
• The Armagh Satchel held at Trinity College Dublin